A certain best friend of mine had a text message saved in her phone from quite awhile ago, and as I was flipping through its simplicity struck me and caught my eye: "Just say what's on your mind. That way you know you can't be wrong."

I think it's beyond fascinating to think, even for a time as short as a few quick seconds, of all the things that run through our mind, but we never say. Because we're scared, or we're 'too nice,' or we don't want to break some unspoken rule or cross some unseen line. There are all these little pieces of ourselves swimming around in some intangible mess of unspoken truths, little pieces that undoubtedly have a place to fit into someone else's unspoken desire to hear the things we have to say. And yet, despite the fact that we have the inclination that a place for our unspoken words does exist, we refuse to let them out on the offchance that we are rejected, hurt, wrong, confused, misled.

Why don't we tell the people that we love we love them?

Why don't we tell someone that those shoes are fucking ugly?

Why don't we confront someone when we think they drink too much for their own good?

Why don't we ask someone to go hang out?

Why do we insist on clinging to the vague and hazy protection of phrases like 'just friends' and 'we're on a break'?

Why don't we put our foot down, and stand up for who we are? What we want? What we don't?

Why don't we tell all these goddamn unspoken rules that we ALL acknowledge to go fuck themselves, knowing that if we could all agree to do away with them, then we would all be able to say and do a lot more of the things we don't?

It just seems that we turn away at the very thought of exposing ourselves, at rendering ourselves vulnerable, when the very thing we fear is other people--other people who turn away at the very same thoughts of exposing themselves to us in turn. We sit, and we are scared, and wish our lives away: we wish we could say this, do that, tell this person this, ask someone that. All these things we never say, what happens to them? What happens to us? With all the 'what ifs' and 'maybes' and 'might have beens,' who is it we really are, once we shed all these useless layers of gloss and timidity?

Why are we afraid?

austin.

So, in lieu of doing a French assignment, I think I'll take just a second to reflect.

Isn't it funny, the way things turn out?

The way you can try to please people, do your best to meet those unseen expectations set far above the ability of performance that drive us all to maddening levels of stress. And, eventually, it all builds up to a point where you throw caution the wind and do it your way, and then (after much stormy weather) you can say, calmly and comfortably, that you're gay. That you're not going to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a fucking engineer. That, yes, you'll go to college wherever you damn well please. That you're engaged. That you're going to be your own person, and not the model of whatever you were unfairly expected to be before you were even conceived and allowed to develop a personality.

The way you can watch a person closer to you than a sibling grow up before your eyes, stumbling out of the awkward throes of pink-cheeked adolescence and into the full blossom of young adulthood, the blush of cheeks in the presence of dirty words now casually replaced by new favorite word: "fuck." The person you never thought would say the word "penis," much less see one, and who turns out to be one of the most beautiful and incredible individuals you could ever hope to meet.

The way you can fall in love with a person, and find out in the end that you were right about loving them all along--just not quite how you imagined. You tear down all your walls that you've built to let them in, find yourself devastated, only to build them all back up again just in time for some new onslaught that leaves you (for the umpteenth time) in ruins. And, in the end, when you've both survived years of hot and cold, on and off, bitter hatred and painful admiration, you realize that you form a friendship no one but the two of you will ever fully understand. And, somewhere along the line, you also realize that maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.

The way you can find that one person, the one who knows just what to say and how to make life seem like a much brighter place, and brings a whole new meaning to the word 'happy.' There are times, of course, when it's impossible to be wholeheartedly in love, and times when the tears will fill and the screams will echo and everything will seem absolutely frustrating in ways you've never imagined. But those times, they're what make your heart twitch a little when you see that smile, the sparkle in those eyes. You know it's worth the fight, and so you stand your ground and you throw down, and when the dust settles you slap a band-aid on your heart and hope that no one's hurt too badly.

The way people drift out of your lives the minute a diploma is in their hand: future Broadway stars and aspiring stay-at-home moms, familiar faces that you always thought you would see in the hallway on your walk to English with that scatter-brained teacher you always took for granted. There's some truth in it all, the bittersweet representation we see in movies that parody what it means to be in high school, what it means to grow up. We all settle comfortably into our niche, find what works for us, and that's who we are. Everyone knows that slightly neurotic girl who cried over a ketchup packet back in seventh grade, and the girl who got pregnant at sixteen and moved away to live with her 'husband', and the guy who everyone always forgets is a Senior. And then, like everything we've worked for the past twelve years doesn't mean much, we're thrown out into the real world, with the slap-in-the-face announcement that it's time to be a real person. And then, it's time. It's deal, or no deal; keep in touch, or don't. You either hold on to those parts of who you are, or you let them drift away, and become someone entirely new and untouched by your past. Me?

I'm holding on.

-Part of You

Currently Listening New Miserable Experience By Gin Blossoms "Hey Jealousy" see related

I've been thinking a lot lately.

As to whether or not that's a positive thing, I've little commentary. I just know that when I think, things simply are. They are not bad, or good. I do not censor my own thoughts, nor do I believe that anyone should. I just think what I think, and let my thoughts come free and uninhibited, and appreciate them for what they are and who they make me.

And sometimes they lead to interesting things.

I'm sure that we've all heard, at some point or another, "Everything I need to to know I learned in kindergarten." I've decided that, in some way, shape, or form, this is ultimately true.

We learn to color in between the lines. This affects our life dramatically and significantly, because it teaches us that certain colors only go in certain spaces on clean, fresh sheets of crisp white paper, and never, ever outside the lines. The prettiest pages, the ones that the teacher always had us emulate, are the ones that use realistic colors. You must color evenly, never too light or too dark, and there was never anything drastic about the example page. We learn that to color outside the lines, to be different and to stray from our boundaries and what we have been taught, means to be wrong and to be ugly.

In kindergarten, we take naps. We are forced to to take naps when we don't want them, coincidentally enough; this is perhaps to remind us later in life, when there is little time to lie our heads down for a short bit of sleep, that rest is precious and fixes all things. When we are small, a nap is the cure to all our woes, to all that is the bane of our small, fragile, childish existence; a nap is the remedy for a tantrum, a headache, a tummy rumble, or tears. And as we grow older, we nap and rest less, and in perfect correllation with our kindergarten education (that many of us forget along the way), we see the number of problems in our lives multiply. A simple enough lesson, we all tragically forget that the best way to improve our lives is to stop, and take a moment just to rest and relax.

And, the third and perhaps most widely remembered lesson of our kindergarten days is when we are taught to share. Not only does this instill in us the values of cooperation and openness, it also subconsciously introduces us to several other concepts. In life, you must give in to the wishes of others. There will always be those that are jealous of you, and there will always be those you are jealous of. We want what we do not have, and refuse to relinquish what we possess. We are never satisfied. We are greedy.

Life is fleeting. That seems to be the popular theme of blogs and Xanga entries right now, as the last true summer of the class of '07 draws to a close. With that I won't argue; but I will say that, short as the past twelve years of school and our lives have been, this has been a long and arduous journey, so much of which we have forgotten. Don't ever dismiss what you've already experienced and learned and been a part of as short, and don't ever condemn it as unimportant. Because, in some big or small or insignificant or complex way, it matters. It all matters. I can't tell you why, and I probably never will be able to. No one will. But our memories, our lives, are all we have. It is sad, and it makes us feel small, but in the grand scheme of things, we have only the few years that we're given. We can't extend our lives, and we can't undo them. So live while you're alive.

And consider this: for most of us, our life is, give or take, one fourth complete. 25% of our life has passed. The shorter you choose to make that quarter seem, the shorter that makes your life as a whole. So, sure, it's gone by fast. But don't forget a second of it. Make what you've done, where you've been, who you've met, and what you've said count. Make it count.

Because once the clock stops ticking, it never starts again.